On Cognitive Motivation Of Polysemy

The multiplicity of meanings of a word constitutes the category of polysemy. Is polysemy arbitrary or motivated? By "arbitrary" here is meant that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary without any evidence of motivation. By "motivated' here is meant that the language sign reflects human cognitive structure and his interaction with the world.Saussure's theory of arbitrariness has occupied the predominant position in linguistics. It forms the basis for structuralism. In the traditional approach (structuralism), the researches on the relationship of different senses of a polysemous word are confined to the internal structure of language. They discuss polysemy from the perspective of context and psychology, ignoring the external elements of language, such as human cognitive devices, his experience in the world, and so on, and come to a conclusion that polysemy is nothing but linguistic coincidence. Therefore, the traditional researches haven't revealed all the facts of polysemy or grasped the essence of it and can't explain the linguistic phenomenon of polysemy completely and convincingly.Since arbitrariness of the language sign can't offer a satisfactory answer to polysemy, it is assumed that we can probably make a research on polysemy through the relationship between language and world. That's to say, there is evidence for the motivation of polysemy. The development of cognitive science helps us break through the fence of structuralism and explain the motivation for the multiplicity of meanings ofa polysemous word from the external world------from the human subjective interactionwith the objective world. Based on experientialism and combined with modern cognitive theories, the thesis makes a tentative study on polysemy in the prototype model and comes to a conclusion that polysemy is the process of the extension to the other senses from the core or basic sense by the means of cognitive devices, such as metonymy and metaphor, and the result of human cognitive categorization and conceptualization. Polysemy is well-motivated. The significance of the thesis is that the arbitrariness is not the unique characteristic of the language sign. Language is the product of human's interaction with the world. To some extent, the motivation of the language sign is a strong complement to the theory of arbitrariness.